Page 37 of Defending Mateo
“You knew?” Mateo was pretty sure he was staring at his boss with his mouth hanging open. It only just dawned on him then that he never showed up here after a woman was sold, he just texted the intel to Falcon. But his boss had been waiting up, prepared for his arrival, with a team already in place for the extraction, yet he’d never mentioned Ally to anyone.
“It’s my job to know everything important about my team,” Falcon replied.
“I broke up with her five months ago.”
“Which is why I thought she was safe and moved my guy back a little. Figured if Azure were going to target her because of you, they would have done it already. My mistake, I'm sorry they got their hands on her.”
It wasn't Falcon’s fault. It was his. It had been his job to keep the woman he’d fallen in love with safe, and he’d failed.
“Pretty sure they only went after her because of Nathan. I'm not blaming him, he did what he had to do for his girl, and they don’t know exactly why he’s gone, although there are a dozen rumors to explain it, but Griffin is on edge. Ally was a test. I'm guessing the others will all be tested, too. Better warn your other two guys about that.”
“I’ll handle it,” Falcon said vaguely. “Do you need to get back for something specific, or are you just planning on making an excuse as to why you're going to be gone for a couple of days?”
“Gone for a couple of days?” he echoed, not sure what his boss was talking about. “I can't disappear now. If I do, I'm pretty much confirming that I'm not trustworthy, that I prioritized a woman I pretended I didn't care about over Azure. If I do that, there’s no going back. I won't be able to help with Ally’s rescue, then just go back there. They’ll either torture and kill me as a traitor or torture and kill me for messing with their business and getting her out, tainting Azure’s reputation. I won't be able to finish the job I signed up for if I participate in her rescue.”
“So you're not going in with the team?” Falcon asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
“No.”
“Guess I overestimated your feelings for her. I was under the impression that you were in love with her. Obviously, I was wrong.”
Those words were the final straw.
The thing that made him snap.
All thoughts of the sleeping children upstairs vanished as Mateo threw himself at his boss. Days of pretending it wasn't slowly killing him inside, that Ally was suffering because of him, all bubbled over. Hell, two decades worth of emotion that he had carefully shoved down into a box, pretending that he no longer felt anything at all, rushed through him.
They fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs.
Trading blows, although Mateo was still cognizant enough to realize that his boss wasn't doing all that much to shut down his little tantrum.
It was all too much. This was why he’d chosen to shut down his emotions to begin with. So he never had to feel like this again. Helpless, ripped open inside, overwhelmed, like the world had stopped spinning, but he was still moving, ready to be thrown right off and sent spiraling into space.
Tears blurred his vision, but he didn't cry.
He. Didn't. Cry.
Not anymore. Not since he learned that nobody really cared if you were hurting, if you were scared, or even if you were going to die. Not if it negatively impacted them.
But Ally cared.
“I love her,” he ground out, breathing heavily, no longer swinging at Falcon.
“I know you do,” Falcon assured him. “You just needed a push to admit it out loud.”
“My job is to bring down Azure. To get justice for all the women they hurt. I can't abandon that for Ally. That would be wrong. Selfish. The Delta Force team can get her out without me.” He pulled out the bracelet, needing the connection to her, needing to feel as if she were closer than the hundreds of miles separating them.
“They can,” Falcon agreed. “But I think she’d rather have you there.”
“It would be selfish of me to throw everything I've worked for away because I want to be the one to rescue her, to be her hero.”
“You're one of the least selfish people I know. Mateo, sometimes doing the little things is more important than the big ones. You and Nathan have both contributed a lot of intel that will help us find what we need to end Azure. I supported Nathan breaking his cover for Emma, and he only fell for her while she was there. I’ve been prepared from the moment I knew Ally was missing for you to contact me and tell me you needed help getting her out.”
“I wanted to, but I thought it would be selfish of me. Can't be selfish, can't be likethem,” he snarled as he thought of his family selfishly walking away from him to save themselves while he begged them to take him with them.
“Wanting to save someone you love doesn’t make you selfish, Mateo. But it’s up to you. You can go back to Azure now, and I’llmake sure Trigger and his team get Ally out. Or, you can go with them and be your girl’s hero.”
Being selfish went against everything he’d believed in, was everything he’d tried not to be for almost two-thirds of his life, but the way Ally had shut down when she realized he had no intention of being part of her rescue haunted him. After everything he was responsible for, she still wanted him there.
